In keeping with the theme of celebration, I was delighted to open our brand-new exhibition, ‘Who cares? A history of emotions in nursing’ earlier this month. This fantastic exhibition looks at the cultural context in which emotions have been understood in nursing.
Nurses experience a high level of emotion throughout their day to day work, supporting people through birth to death. Nursing staff care about their patients and the work that they do. They support people at their most vulnerable moments, and this will inevitably stir up their own emotions. Over the years, as a profession, we have got better at understanding how carrying these emotions impacts us long term and what that means for managing our own mental health.
What we are doing now, through this exhibit and initiatives like the Year of the Nurse and Midwife, is giving these emotions a voice.
We can also use this an opportunity to reflect on what it means to be a nurse in 2020. Our next exhibit, out in the spring, is dedicated to Florence Nightingale in her bicentennial year. Florence Nightingale also gave voice to her patients. And like her, nursing staff today continue to advocate for their patients and demand what’s necessary to deliver care.
There will be a lot more activity across 2020 to mark this momentous year. We will soon be sharing our celebration packs for Nurses Day, and we are pleased to support the Nightingale2020 conference in October.
I look forward to seeing many of you at these events and putting nursing and midwifery front and centre for both the public and the government in 2020.
Nurses experience a high level of emotion throughout their day to day work, supporting people through birth to death. Nursing staff care about their patients and the work that they do. They support people at their most vulnerable moments, and this will inevitably stir up their own emotions. Over the years, as a profession, we have got better at understanding how carrying these emotions impacts us long term and what that means for managing our own mental health.
What we are doing now, through this exhibit and initiatives like the Year of the Nurse and Midwife, is giving these emotions a voice.
We can also use this an opportunity to reflect on what it means to be a nurse in 2020. Our next exhibit, out in the spring, is dedicated to Florence Nightingale in her bicentennial year. Florence Nightingale also gave voice to her patients. And like her, nursing staff today continue to advocate for their patients and demand what’s necessary to deliver care.
There will be a lot more activity across 2020 to mark this momentous year. We will soon be sharing our celebration packs for Nurses Day, and we are pleased to support the Nightingale2020 conference in October.
I look forward to seeing many of you at these events and putting nursing and midwifery front and centre for both the public and the government in 2020.
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